Judith Brotman: Captive Audience April 3, 2009

April 3rd - May 8th, 2009

Opens: April 3rd, 6-9pm

Artist Talk: April 23d, 6pm

Working in industrial felt, miscellaneous hardware and materials culled from the everyday, Judith Brotman sculpts an abstract tableaux of traps and teasers, prosthetics and instruments. Her sculptural installation practice combines an exercised restraint with a sense of elegant craftsmanship in service to arrangements that both invite our intimacy and confound our sense of modesty.

Between trap and teaser is the nature of love and relating, with Brotman’s objects embodying the binary nature of intimacy, from the quest for the ideal to subterfuge. Haunting, sexual, mysterious yet absurd and funny, her sculptures tune into a kind of dark truth about desire: while they seek to capture what is revered, they still reveal themselves as crutch.

Brotman’s allusions to the trouble of love, whether amorous, filial or brotherly call up, yet abstract, the body, providing apt emblems for the misshapenness of human need, hubris and agony. Taken together, these parts describe the finest shade of difference between each communication, each association, each poignant interaction.

Judith Brotman is the 3rd SOLO artist to be featured in 2008/2009 at threewalls. Other solo exhibitions include White Lies, Delicate Matters at The Chicago Cultural Center, ReCollecting at MN Gallery and Ellipses at Artemisa. Brotman has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including Illinois State Museum, Hyde Park Art Center, Evanston Art Center and Northern Illinois University. She has been reviewed in The Chicago Tribune, Newcity, The New York Times and The Boston Globe, among others.

Join us April 23rd at 6pm for an artist talk with Brotman to hear more about her influences and direction.